Gambia

Developing countries on Friday managed to bury a proposal of the Least Developing Countries (LDCs) on agriculture. The proposal said that studies need to be carried out to ascertain the role of agriculture in global warming. This proposal, placed before a scientific advisory body of the United Nations Frame Work Convention of Climate Change (UNFCCC) in the ongoing annual climate change talks in Doha, not only showed the deep divisions that run within the developing countries collectively known as the G77+China but was also seen as an aberration to the stand of the developing world that agriculture is only a subject for adaptation and not mitigation.

The swords and daggers are still not out. Going by previous experience of climate change conferences, the big fights are generally kept for the last week of the conference, ceremoniously also known as the high level segment. However, on the opening day of the 18th Conference of Parties (CoP18) in Doha, Qatar, parties reaffirmed their positions, on which each will try to consolidate its position over the next two weeks. Although Doha seems to be just another milestone in the setting-up process of a new treaty in 2015, based on the Durban Platform to be implemented from 2020, the coming two weeks will see confrontations, if not fisticuffs on numerous contentious issues that need to be settled before 2013. And in one of the several press conferences held on the first day, the United States, a party that has always shied away from taking on carbon emissions reduction, made this clear.